Going South or Going Home? Trends in Concurrent Streams of African American Migrants to the US South Over Four Decades

Abstract

Since the mid-1970s, the United States (US) South has been a net destination for African American migrants. We analyzed data from 1976 to 2015 to highlight major characteristics of migrants to the US South at the Public Use Microdata Areas (PUMA) level. Grounded in neoclassical and social network migration theory, we propose there are concurrent streams of migrants—those searching for economic opportunity and those returning to homeplaces. Here, we show that the overall percentage of migrants moving to rural areas has declined from 30 percent in 1980 to 14 percent in 2015. Our results suggest the stream of migrants moving for economic opportunity has always been larger and has grown proportionally larger with time. Along with a decrease in rural-bound migration, we demonstrate an overall decrease in migration, a concentration of migrants in a shrinking number of urban centers, and an unexpected increase in the human capital of rural migrants. Our findings have forced us to reckon with assumptions that professionals leaving cities for rural communities is a uniquely white phenomenon, challenged us to consider the importance of social ties to urban areas, and raised questions about the role of technology as a deterrent to moving home.